|News of the Weird
News & Opinion
Million Dollar Baby
Jennalee Ryan of San Antonio last year began selling choice human embryos, ready for prospective mothers to implant after having chosen from Ryan’s catalog describing the contributors’ education, attractiveness and medical history. “We’re just trying to help people have babies,” she told The Washington Post in January, and at less cost than full in-vitro procedures (since she has eliminated the risk of failed fertilizations). But, said a bioethicist, “It’s like you’re ordering a computer from Dell.” (Ryan said she does not take custom orders.) Of her emphasis on well-educated, good-looking contributors of sperm and eggs, she said, “Who wants an ugly, stupid kid?”
Can’t Possibly Be True
17
by Chuck Shepherd
Unclear on the Concept
The school system in Hagerstown, Md., issued a written reprimand in December to the parents of a 5-year-old kindergarten boy who had pinched a classmate’s buttocks, terming his behavior “sexual” harassment. Said his dad: “He knows nothing about sex. There’s no way to explain (to him) what he’s been written up for.” Also in December, the principal of a preschool in Bellmead, Texas, issued an in-school suspension to a 4-yearold boy after he hugged his female teacher’s aide with his face in her chest, which was termed “sexual contact and/or sexual harassment” (though following complaints, the offense was changed to “inappropriate physical behavior”).
The Continuing Crisis
Names in the News
(1) The allegedly drunk 23-year-old driver who caused a collision in Lynn, Mass., in December: Mr. Chansavong Y (whose name really is Y). (2) Convicted of attempted murder of his former girlfriend’s current boyfriend in Cocoa, Fla., in December: Mr. Taj Mahal Owens. (3) The legislator seen erupting toward the speaker of Taiwan’s parliament in January and throwing her shoes at him: Ms. Wang Shu-hui. (4) The man whose death in August left a vacancy on the Vidor, Texas, school board: Mr. Ivan Croak.
Least Competent Criminals
Easy Collars: (1) Nicholas Raber, 19, was arrested in Annapolis, Md., in December for punching a police officer and dashing up a flight of stairs after yelling, “You’ll never catch me.” The officers were aware that upstairs exits were locked and so waited patiently for Raber to come back down and be handcuffed. (2) Mitchell Sigman, 22, was arrested and charged with robbing the Village Pantry in Elkhart, Ind., in November, after the clerk-victim identified him as a regular customer and one who had recently filled out an application to work there. Failures to Keep a Low Profile: (1) College student Cory Shapiro, 19, was arrested in January after he flagged down a police officer to complain that he had been overcharged for drinks at the Athens, Ga., bar Bourbon Street. (2) Sunday school teacher Edgar Selavka, 49, was arrested after he reported to police in Northampton, Mass., in January that someone had stolen his backpack from church; shortly afterward, police found the backpack in a nearby restroom, with its contents on the floor, including at least 11 child pornography photos.
The Classic Middle Name (all new)
Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Michael Wayne Poe (Dayton, Tenn., October); Timothy Wayne Widman (Pittsburgh, Pa., September); John Wayne Peck (Beaverdam, Va., October). Murder warrants issued recently: Bradley Wayne Hamrick (Longview, Wash., September); Billy Wayne Hayes (Nashville, Tenn., December); Christopher Wayne Luttrell (Henderson, Ky., October). Ordered re-sentenced for a 2001 murder: Gary Wayne Kleypas (Topeka, Kan., December). w
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We License Fishing, But We Can’t LiDaring young men use the danger of cense Parenting? (1) Shawn Mohan, 20, was moving cars for attention, especially if arrested in January for shooting his infant there’s a video camera rolling. An 18-yearson several times with a BB gun. Mohan said old Topeka, Kan., man became the latest it was an accident, but the St. Charles Coun“Jackass”-imitating casualty when he bailed ty, Mo., sheriff pointed to similar bruises out of a car going 35 mph in October on the baby’s face, left arm, hand, foot, hip and suffered a serious head injury. and buttocks, and said Mohan was on Other video performers go probation for an earlier child-endan“ghost riding the whip” (letgerment conviction. (2) Samaritans ting their cars coast in neutral stopped on Interstate 465 in Indiawhile they climb onto the Look into napolis in December to help a wanroof to dance), with at least dering 3-year-old boy wearing only two deaths reported. In the my eyes a diaper and T-shirt. Police tracked newest craze, Jonathas Mendown his mother, Nancy Dyer, in donca, 22, was hospitalized her filthy apartment, where her in critical condition in Fort 2-year-old daughter was eating Lauderdale, Fla., in January spaghetti off the floor. Dyer’s first after “skiing” (holding onto reaction to news about her son: “Oh, the back of a car) on Interstate he got out again.” 95 at 65 mph. For two months late last year after In September, according to a pair of convicted murderers escaped sheriff ’s officials in Buffalo, N.Y., from Sudbury prison in England, the Thomas Montgomery murdered a local Derbyshire police refused to 22-year-old workplace colrelease their pictures. According to league in a love triangle involvthe police, “Photographs of named ing a West Virginia woman, people that are in police possession except that two of the three triangle charare classed as data, and their release is acters were nonexistent. Montgomery, age restricted by law” to instances where there 47, was pretending to be a young Marine is a “proper policing purpose.” Derbyshire in online conversation with the woman, 45, authorities said that since the escapees had who was pretending she was her 18-year-old probably left the area, there was no such daughter. The murder victim had also struck purpose, and the photographs should be up an online conversation with the woman, kept confidential. apparently making Montgomery jealous, but the victim, ironically, was the only one in the Chutzpah! triangle who wasn’t someone else. After Emmalee Bauer, 25, was fired by In January, a hospice in Britain run by the Sheraton hotel company in late 2006, she Sister Frances Dominica approved the wish sought unemployment compensation from of a 22-year-old man (born with Duchenne the Iowa agency that offers benefits to emmuscular dystrophy), who wanted to lose his ployees terminated through no fault of their virginity before he died. The Douglas House own. However, the judge noted that Bauer hospice arranged for a prostitute to visit him had written a 300-page journal, during office at his family’s home, and the man said afterhours, chronicling her efforts to avoid work. ward, “It was not emotionally fulfilling, but Among her entries: “This typing thing seems the lady was very pleasant.” to be doing the trick. It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important,” The District of Calamity and, “Once lunch is over, I will come right The Washington Post, examining 135 back to writing to piddle away the rest of the cases of disability by “stress” among Washafternoon,” and, “Accomplishment is overington, D.C., police officers, found only 16 rated, anyway.” (Her claim was denied.) that resulted from specific incidents, such
as gunfire, with the rest due to “common workplace tensions” (“arguments with colleagues, shift changes, disciplinary actions” among them). According to an internal police memo, the department’s generous disability benefit would be “unheard of in private industry and public service,” and the department’s rate of officers unable to work is, for example, several times higher than Baltimore’s, according to the Post’s October report.